Internal components of gas and steam turbines, for example, steam turbine blades are typically visually inspected by inserting a borescope through an opening in the outer turbine shell and articulating the video head of the borescope to achieve the desired inspection view. It will be appreciated that each inspection is conducted during a turbine outage. Typically a substantial waiting period is necessary after shutdown and before inspection because current flexible borescope inspection equipment has a temperature limit of approximately 120° F. As a result of this temperature limitation, gas and steam turbine inspections cannot be performed until the turbine cools down from its normal operating temperature to a temperature less than the about 120° F. flexible borescope temperature limit. The problem is particularly exacerbated in steam turbines which typically require weeks to cool down from operating temperatures, for example, upwards of 1050° F., to the limit of about 120° F. While gas turbines typically cool faster than steam turbines, there is a time delay even with gas turbines before visual inspection of internal gas turbine components can be performed using temperature limited flexible borescopes. Consequently where the articulation capability of a flexible borescope is required, the current and only option is to wait until the turbine cools down to below the temperature limit imposed by the flexible borescope before inspection can proceed. Accordingly, there is a need to minimize the time delay previously necessary to enable inspection of internal turbine components at elevated temperatures.